Jonathan Little's Weekly Poker Hand: Flopping Quads and Considering Tells
Poker pro and coach Jonathan Little has been producing a wide variety of strategy content for poker players for some time, including authoring multiple books and sharing videos and articles on his website and elsewhere, much of which is free to players of all levels seeking to improve their games.
Little started his popular "Weekly Poker Hand" series on YouTube several years ago, and recently he decided to switch up the format to begin featuring footage from live small- and medium-stakes cash games and tournaments.
In the episode shown below, Little is back at Stones Gambling Hall in California to analyze another hand from a fun $1/$3 no-limit hold'em cash game featuring a $10 straddle. The stacks are deep, the play loose and aggressive, and in this hand a player who has already been active flops huge and endeavors to get paid off with a big hand.
After the straddle, action begins with Gina raising to $30 from the cutoff (from a stack of about $900) with Q♠J♥. Only one player calls — Jouhan in the big blind who has about $1K to start and has been dealt 5♣3♣. Little notes how defending the big blind with such a hand isn't always necessary, although here the game is quite loose and Jouhan might be considering how her opponent has been splashy and is deep-stacked.
The flop comes J♦J♣J♠ to give Gina quads and both players immediately check. Little points out how Gina might have continuation bet or at least not checked quite so fast, an action he thinks might seem a little unusual and thus might telegraph something about her hand.
The turn is the 3♥ to give Jouhan a full house and she bets $50 into the $64 pot, and Gina calls. The river then brings the 10♠ and Jouhan checks this time, and Gina hesitates before deciding how much to bet.
Here again Little talks about tells, evoking poker author and tells expert Zachary Elwood as he does. Little additionally discusses bet sizing as Gina contemplates what might be the best amount to bet in order to extract value from her big hand. And he also talks about Jouhan's decision and how difficult it can be sometimes to know what to do when a loose-aggressive makes a big river bet as Gina does here.
Some of the concepts Little discusses in the hand analysis include:
- blind defense
- continuation betting
- tells
- slow playing
- bet sizing
Take a look to see what Gina bet and how the hand ultimately played out:
Jonathan Little is a professional poker player and author with over $6,900,000 in live tournament earnings. He writes a weekly educational blog and hosts a podcast at JonathanLittlePoker.com. Sign up to learn poker from Jonathan for free at PokerCoaching.com. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanLittle.
